Queen Victoria's Secretary
Henry Ponsonby. By Arthur Ponsonby. (Macmillan. 2ts.)
THE career of a private secretary, buffer between the exigencies of an employer and the demands of the outer world, is seldom altogether enviable. When the employer is a Queen, combining the ingrained feminine conviction that diplomatic language is usually a waste of time and everyone the better for a little plain speaking, with a tendency to write direct to her Ministers over her secretary's head and to publish her decisions through a Lady-in-Waiting or a German governess, then the difficulties of the task assume pro- portions which might well daunt the most gifted. Sir Henry Ponsonby, by a combination of tact and patience, humour and principle, overcame them all. "No one could have known him so long as I and seeks him continually and for such long periods together in each passage of life and business without being com- pelled to feel and care for him," wrote Mr. Gladstone when, at last, he collapsed as a result of his 25 years' overwork ; and the Queen, at his death, " He was always so kind and so fair and just, that I miss him terribly." On this subject, at least, there could be no disagreement. The job, of course, had its compensations. No one saw more of the making of contemporary history ; no one was in a better positio to know and judge the princes, soldiers and statesmen of the day ; no one earned greater affection and respect in the performance his duties. Moreover, it was a job which had to be done, and 11 could do it. An obstinate man would have made the Queen mor obstinate still, a weak man would have won her contempt, a injudicious man might have precipitated a constitutional crisis But what a price was paid for the privilege of interpreting, in a temperate an atmosphere as could be contrived, the advice Ministers to the Sovereign and the views of the Sovereign to he Ministers ! There was not only the constant stream of notes tha flowed from the royal writing-table. There were the ladies wh wrote to offer the Queen pamphlets on vivisection or to ask whethe
as a child she had been fond of dolls. There were divorcees dodging behind doors in the hope of a presentation ; and John Brown to be locked into his room, drunk, while the Queen waited to drive out, erect and silent, in her carriage. There was the appalling boredom of royal dinner parties and the extreme discomfort of royal sur- roundings, whether at Balmoral, where fires were frowned upon, or at Florence, where a painting of Pauline Borghese, " without too much clothes," on the ceiling failed to make up for an uncomfort- able bedroom, or at Windsor, where, as a friend wrote, " most of our time is spent in a sort of game of ' post' or hide-and-seek, looking for and searching for each other—and being hunted by servants who got lost." A soldier who had made his battalion " the best in the regiment," Sir Henry Ponsonby, renounced the profession he pre- ferred ; a devoted husband, he was separated from his wife for several months in every year ; the most peaceable of men, he was continually obliged to deal with the violence of other people's feel- ings. His life was a triumph of self-effacement.
Something of the same quality pervades his biography. Seldom can a book have been written with less attempt to judge or emphasise. The author, Ponsonby's third 'son, was brought up at Windsor and Osborne, but keeps a stern check on reminiscence. Occasionally it creeps out : Disraeli, in a blue frock-coat and with rings over his white gloves, stops suddenly in his walk to ask the three tongue-tied young Ponsonbys what is the capital of Cyprus? The Queen passes, and ice hockey is quickly turned to figure skating until she is out of sight. But in the main the story is left to the documents, and so is sometimes incomplete, for when Sir Henry rejoins his wife the daily letters stop and we are left with a discreet footnote referring us to some other work for the sequel. The book is consequently better suited for browsing or reference than for reading through at a stretch. To say this is no criticism of the author, still leas of the subject • for no man, it is clear, would have liked dramatisation of his life less than Sir Henry Ponsonby.
LETT10E FOWLER.
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